Friday

On the first pass I trimmed it from 175,000 words to 150,000.On the second pass, I only managed to cut another 2,000 words.

Thusly does today mark the start of

I'm going adverb hunting today...I've cut a huge chunk of unnecessary adverbs in dialog attributions--she said quietly, he said menacingly--but I'm sure there are tons within the narrative. The thing with adverbs is that they help when writing, they're not so wonderful for the reader. Being able to write concisely without overusing adverbs is one of my weaknesses, but I'm working on it.

This isn't another attempt at trimming the word count--which it will do to s point--but rather an attempt to tighten it up before handing it over to the editor, who is MEAN and likes to MAKE ME CRY. When all is said and done she'll either find 13,000 things wrong with it and tell me where I can cut 30,000 words, or it will wind up being a longer than average book.

Sometimes it takes a little longer than normal to tell a story. As long as it doesn't turn out to be a wonder cure for insomnia, long is okay.

Back to work...after lunch and perhaps a scooter ride to Walmart for cauliflower and cottage cheese. And maybe after I do the dishes. And the laundry.

Thursday

The doctor seems pretty sure that whatever the Spouse Thingy's problem was yesterday, it was not a heart attack. Nothing involving the heart. He had the Spouse Thingy perform several cute tricks that made me wish I had a hidden camera (checking, I assume, for signs of a stroke) and her performed them all quite aptly.

So, what he might have had:

a virus

bad gas

a Drama Queen moment

bad ass moment from calorie restriction

Based on family history, though, Super Doc is still sending the Spouse Thingy to get a stress test and is going to draw blood to check his cholesterol and blood sugar (could not do it today as he'd eaten breakfast before we left.)

In short...he's fine. But keeping an eye on his heart is always a good idea, given how his father died.

Today's OH MY GOD moment: discovering our satellite TV was out. Because truly, without it, we would have to talk to each other. I mnea, really... The horror of that coupled with DirecTV not being able to send someone out until Tuesday to fix it spurred the Spouse Thingy into fixing it himself. Because damn...talk to each other? Really?

Wednesday

This little car?It's Toyota Yaris.LITTLE car.Great gas mileage, roughly 35-40 mpg.Today, I discovered I can easily do 85 in it.

I discovered this because around 10:30 the Spouse Thingy wandered into my office area, looking not-so-hot and said he didn't feel so hot. He was dizzy, nauseous, and his heart rate had dropped to about 54.

This made my Wabbit hairs stand on end. Because in the Thumper household, those are scary symptoms based on a strong Spouse Thingy Family History of Unhappy Hearts.

Thusly was he given two choices: I either take him to the ER or call 911. (Yes, I should have called 911 without asking, but he's a nurse and was a cardiac nurse for many years, I trusted him to make the decision.)

I kept it at about 70ish for the first part of the ride, but we just weren't getting there as fast as I would like, and being a True California Driver now, I punched it and lane drifted (he may have mentioned then that his left arm was feeling a bit tingly). We made the fifteen minute ride in, gosh, fourteen minutes. We got into the ER, I butted in line because HOLY HELL I THINK HE'S HAVING A HEART ATTACK SO LOOK AT HIM! LOOK AT HIM RIGHT NOW!!! (ok, I was quieter and said, "Excuse me, my husband might be having a heart attack," which worked just as well) and they took him right back (while I did paperwork. Yay.)

While I signed our financial future away (or maybe yours, since a combination of insurance and Uncle Sam will likely pay for this) they gave him an EKG.

It was fine.

They drew blood.

It was fine.

Another EKG.

It was fine.

After two hours there (and the Boy showing up, because, =surprise= a voice mail from your mom saying OH MY GOD HE'S IN THE ER HAVING A HEART ATTACK [or maybe it was just um, I took him to the ER and they're ruling it out] tends to spur children into cars and towards the suffering parental unit) the Spouse Thingy was feeling much better. No longer dizzy or nauseated and his arm was not tingly. His heart rate was still low, however. Could have been anything. He's been dieting and cut calories nearly in half, might be that. Gas maybe? We don't know yet.

Long and short...they cleared him. He did not have a heart attack. REPEAT: HE DID NOT HAVE A HEART ATTACK. He does, however, have an appointment tomorrow with our family doc for followup and he strongly suspects he will wind up on a treadmill with sticky thingies all over him while they try to stress him out.

I can help. If they want him stressed I will stand there with Ben Gay and threaten to shove it in his shorts if he doesn't run... I'd be happy to do that, because I love him.

Sunday

It's no secret...Max likes my boobs. Every morning while waiting for me to wake up, he curls up on top of me, and you can guess what he uses for a pillow. He would definitely miss them if they were gone.

Now, Max has a blog friend, Jeter Harris, and Jeter's mom is doing the Susan G. Komen 60 mile walk in October. And Max, being a total boob guy, would like to help raise money for her worthy endeavor.

To that end, he's offering this:

an Aspire Aspire One 8.9" netbook; for every $5 donated, you get a shot at winning it. I've loaded MS Office 2007 on it (fully functional...I chewed up a license to make it work) and has Zone Alarm loaded. It even has a spiffy skin on it!

Visit Max's blog to donate and get a chance at winning it...details are in his July 19 entry, and there's a donate button in his right sidebar.

Tuesday

I'm not exactly sure what I was expecting at the eye doctor today, but apparently it was something along the lines of Surprise! Your eyes have gotten younger! because I was certainly disappointed with the news that I still need bifocals...

Saturday

Every other week or so I see the same older couple wander into the Border's bookstore coffee shop. And every time he asks his wife the same thing: "Do they have scones today, Momma?" and every time she sighs and tells him yes; go sit down and I'll get you one.

He takes his coffee with extra cream; I know this because he invariably picks a table as far from the counter as possible and then finds it necessary to remind her as she's placing their order.

Today I was at a small table near the counter because a group of inconsiderate people took the larger table I usually work from. Really. How very rude. As if they didn't know I would be there, wanting to spread my papers out.

I made do with the smaller table and was proofing the chapter I had red-lined last night. After he asked about the scone, I heard her ask him very quietly, "What is she always working on?"

I did not clue in to whom she was referring until I felt him standing behind me, reading over my shoulder.

"She's writing smut, Momma!"

What was on the screen of my netbook?

My soul cracked open and spilled out onto the floor in a giant puddle of embarrassed Oh Hell No.

And I waited for the certain Tsk of derision.

Instead, from behind me came a small voice. "Can I read it?"

I did not get a refill on my tea today; I waited a few minutes and as they sat down to their coffee and scones I packed my things and left, feeling just a little bit dirty but trying hard to not laugh my ass off.

I did not know I was writing smut. Here I thought it was chick porn...

Friday

I started my current manuscript in March; unlike my previous work, It's Not About The Cookies*, this one poured out without any wailing or pulling of hair on my part. In three months time it grew from a suggestion of "You should totally do this as a story!" from a friend to a bloated 175,000 words.

That's a lot of words.

Too many, actually. When you figure my first three books weighed in at 111,000-113,000 each...this one is downright obese and needs a little help from my inner Jenny Craig.

I trimmed it down to 150,000 on the first pass, but now that I'd into the slice and dice process, trying to edit as I rewrite, I find I'm adding as many words as I'm excising. Halfway into it, with an incredible amount of wordicide (shut up. That is too a word), I've got it down to...150,000 words.

Typically I don't let anyone see what I'm working on at this stage of the game. It's still a first draft, still raw, and the idea of allowing other eyes to see my literary vomit is just a wee bit uncomfortable. But I'm going to do it anyway.

Char, wife of Murf, the one who was in that horrible accident last week, is on the mend (long, long way to go for sure, but it looks like she'll make a full recovery) and wants to read it. Now, how do you say no to that? "Um, sure, you're laid up in a hospital bed because you damn near DIED and you've had TWO major surgeries AND you need a distraction from your hovering husband...BUT I'm not gonna let you read the manuscript of a storyline YOU suggested."

Yeah, I'm mean but not that mean.

I'll spend the weekend going through the second half of the manuscript, and then I will mentally wet myself as I send an electronic copy, formatted for use with a Kindle...and then hope that she doesn't laugh her stitches loose because it's that bad.

Oh yeah, it's that bad right now. A first draft is first for a reason.

So...I'm off to the evilness otherwise known as "The Gym" for a little bit and then I'm heading to Borders where I will pick at words and try to not add more than I am removing, and I will feel incredibly self conscious about the whole thing knowing that next week someone else will be reading this bloated and convoluted book.

If I really do wet myself please don't point and laugh. Just pass the Depends and tell me what a good little Wabbit I am.

Thursday

It was time for a change. Again. I wanted something a little softer to look at, and I wanted something that had my RSS code embedded...thusly did I play around with free templates and risk borking everything up by tweaking them.

'Course, the comments didn't migrate...Such is the suckitude of switching from HTML to XML.

Still have some tweaking to do, because some of the blogs I follow didn't seem to migrate. What to do, what to do...

Saturday

Right about the time I was making my previous post, one of my favorite people was in a nasty, nasty accident. Murf's ("I keep forgetting I have a blog") wife, Char, was slammed into in the middle of an intersection by a drunk driver doing 80 mph. She's pretty banged up, as one might expect, and she's in ICU with a laundry list of injuries, but eventually she should heal up physically.

She's got a hell of a long road ahead of her, but for right now, she's here, and that's all that matters.

Char and I fell into an easy friendship when she married Murf; we might go weeks without talking, but when we do it's comfortable and not strained with my odd conversational shyness. It helps that she can talk enough for three people

A week ago I was helping them set up a new blog; they're enjoying the wonders of having a teenager in the house and it seemed funny to start blogging about it. Now it looks like Murf will be using it to update friends and family about how she's doing.

He could use a little emotional support, I think. It's the suckiest of ways to launch a blog, but if you're inclined to lurk, it's here.

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Doctor Who Quotes

There's something that doesn't make sense. Let's go and poke it with a stick.

We're all stories in the end. Just make it a good one, eh?

Every time you see them happy, you remember how sad they're going to be. And it breaks your heart. Because what's the point in them being happy now if they're going to be sad later? And the answer is, of course, because they're going to be sad later.

The way I see it, every life is a pile of good things and bad things. The good things don’t always soften the bad things, but vice versa the bad things don’t always spoil the good things and make them unimportant.

Do you know, in nine hundred years of time and space I’ve never met anyone who wasn’t important before.

If it’s time to go, remember what you’re leaving. Remember the best. My friends have always been the best of me.